I’ve been in the Managed Print space for over 15 years. If there wasn’t money in it I would have left a long time ago. Same goes for the office equipment dealers I work with. Managed Print has been a great source of wealth for all. Look at some of these incredible statistics that keep us all very interested in Managed Print:
- Over 30 billion original documents are used each year in the United States. (SOURCE)
- For every dollar that a company spends to create a final document, 10 dollars are spent to manage the document creation process. (SOURCE)
- 3% – the average amount of business revenue eaten up by copying and printing (the equivalent to an IT department’s ENTIRE budget!) (SOURCE)
- 5% – the portion of a total IT budget used to meet the cost of printing. (SOURCE)
- Global printing market to top $980 billion by 2018. (SOURCE)
$980 billion! Now that’s some cake. Why don’t VARs (Value Added Reseller) or Managed IT providers want some? For the average VAR, “MPS” is a dirty word because they’ve tried it and failed. The CPP (Cost Per Page) model was simply too outside the realm of how they do things to really catch fire. For the average Managed IT provider dealing with a lot of the “S” customers in “SMB” they haven’t seen the financial incentive. No need for “managed print” when a customer only has 2 printers and 1 MFD.
Thanks to wholesale SBB (Seat Based Billing) for Managed Print, neither argument holds water any longer. You can provide SBB for MPS for a customer with 10,000 users or 10 users. The billing mechanism mirrors what you are doing today for other IT related services. SBB for MPS is set to make a big impact in 2016-2017 as volumes per user stabilize and wholesale models hit the market. Some of the biggest names in distribution are preparing wholesale SBB programs that will take away the risk and simplify delivery. You don’t have to get your hands dirty supplying toner or fixing printers. Your wholesale SBB provider will do all of that for you.
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Think SBB is a pipe dream? According to Photizo in their 2016 report entitled “2016 Am I Paying Too Much For My MPS Contract?“, the following statistics say otherwise:
- 8% of customers are currently paying for MPS through SBB.
- Of new MPS customers, 11% choose SBB as their billing model of choice.
How does SBB work? Put simply, SBB is a fixed monthly fee per user for print. No more counting color and monochrome pages, no more overages or complicated accounting. For example, you might have a customer with 100 users. An assessment is conducted to understand costs, and it is determined that you can provide SBB at $14/user/month. The monthly invoice for the customer is $1,400 a month, period. The same bill for office printing every month. Predictable and bankable recurring revenue. Just like you’re doing for Managed IT services.
As a VAR or Managed IT provider you currently offer SBB for other office needs like desktop and server management. Now you can simply “layer” your existing SBB contract with MPS. If you aren’t looking for ways to fatten your current SBB contracts with new recurring revenue streams then disregard this article. Life is good, no need to make more money than you need, right? Ahem.
How can you make wholesale SBB work for your practice? It’s simple. As a VAR or Managed IT provider you can access SBB for MPS from your Distributor. They’ll help you do an Assessment of the customer environment and give you a wholesale SBB price that will include toner, service, parts, and software, all for a low, fixed monthly fee per user. No overages. No complicated counting. No need to develop service expertise. Just a willingness to revisit MPS now that SBB has arrived.
Are you intrigued? To learn more about SBB for MPS you can download the primer “The Essential Guide to Seat Based Billing For Managed Print” or contact Print Audit directly. We will help you get started on an SBB program for MPS by introducing you to a Distributor or two, and who knows, you might just fall in love with MPS.